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Comment by timerickson | Hacker News Reader

Id wager that while some of Apple's design can lead to fraying or other failure, they have done a lot in recent years to improve the quality of their products and cables.

1. The introduction of the UniBody design and manafacturing process has made their MacBook Pro laptops much stronger than previous versions and competing plastic laptops.

2. The introduction of the MagSafe charging cable design has been the lifesavor of accidental tugs and trips. As well the second iterative design of the cable (introduced with the MacBook Air) has even further reduced fraying.

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> The introduction of the UniBody design and manafacturing process has made their MacBook Pro laptops much stronger than previous versions and competing plastic laptops.

I'm not sure about this. I have a white macbook from 2007 that never had a problem and has still great battery life while the early 2009 unibody macbook:

1. adapter for external monitors didn't work right until some point in late 2009.

2. got a dent from a battery charger falling on it from 10 cm high.

3. the battery charging circuit died less than 5 months after I bought it and had to be replaced (along with the logic board).

4. the battery life has been awful ever since.

5. went through 3 battery chargers.

6. LED display connection was coming loose and cleaning the screen with anything but the gentlest of touches would cause it to briefly fail.

7. hard drive died this month.

MagSafe WAS great, and now they broke it in the new models. The cable was pointing outwards in the old design and it really was almost impossible to pull your laptop when you pull the cable in any way. Now the cable is pointing back (or forward) and its actually quite easy to pull the laptop (especially the lite air models). I almost dropped it few times because of that

I don't understand. If anything, the new MagSafe design creates a lever when you pull the cable and snaps the charger out much more easily.

Oh, do you mean you pull the cable in parallel with the body, rather than outwards?

I find that with the new 90 degree connector it is much more likely to be yanked in parallel to the machine. The metal mount is much more durable but I've had my laptop nearly pulled out of my hands a few times by someone tripping/yanking on the cord and pulling the machine straight back.

Except the big problem with the old MagSafe plug was that it would get bent around in various positions and eventually some internal connection would break and it would stop working.

I went through at least 3 chargers that way, no joke.

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